From Jewish Are You?

I went out to Margaret Island with my father’s father. Superb sandals he wore, but what kind of sandals would you expect a cobbler to wear? I looked at them from close up, about a yard away. He was walking like a redskin. Who can say that the Maquas know the back of the Mohegan! What enemy that trusted in him did not see the morning? What Mingo that he chased ever sang the song of triumph? Did Mohegan ever lie? No; the truth lived in him, and none else could come out of him. In his youth, he was a warrior, and his moccasins left the stain of blood. In his age, he was wise; his words at the council fire did not blow away with the winds. The sandals squeaked but, despite all the Island dust, their sheen—as it were—remained. We gathered chestnuts in the fall.

My mother’s father died before I was born. Of Spanish Influenza. Imagine dying of flu. Let him be a famous chef, a so-called master chef, head chef at the Golden Bull in the Thirties. Then at a world exhibition, the Hungarian pavilion at, let’s say, Berlin. Let me strut about at the age of three, hands clasped behind my back, Mother gone pale. Me walking like a dead man. Just like the dead man walked when he lived.

Step-grandpa. The word offends me because No. 2 was not a step-relation. Not, anyway, the step-relation who asks the hunter for Snow White’s steaming liver. Mother’s mother divorced—decree nisi—and, while No. 1 was still alive, married No. 2. Twinkle Granny got divorced, and smoked, during the Forties. Pale mauve or blue cigarettes with a golden mouthpiece. You might say she brought another chef into the family—a step down, I suppose, though I shouldn’t penalize him for being a step-relative. Everything he cooks is perfect. Outrageous pastries. Baking’s his forte. Dour, balding, a bit plump, straggly moustache. Irate often. He goes off to Badacsonytomaj, to the market, and comes home with a fluffy chick in his coat pocket. A warm yellow little tennis ball, it wriggles but manages not to be disgusting. Which alters the not-all-positive picture that has grown around step-grandpa. A shame he doesn’t play soccer.

I scratch at the wall, the scrapings get under, they stick beneath, my nail. I stand in the cot and scrape. It accumulates like troubles. My nail has had to be removed three times, and it’s kind of grisly when it grows back. After a while they gave up on removals. The middle finger on the right hand. My nail is like a wild animal’s, a werewolf’s. I’m surely going to howl when the moon is full, hairs of all kinds will grow, and I’ll burst at least one pair of sneakers. It is said (the family says) that I have the same nail as my grandfather, though his got minced in a meat grinder. Bifstek tartare.

I once dreamed that Father’s father paid a visit from the Other World. I have a hard time finding the restaurant. It’s a private function, someone has written in big, scrawled letters. A dishwasher, I hope, a moonlighter, not the manager. We take seats on two sides of a big round table, in the company of roughly ten employees who say nothing at all in what ensues. They fidget morosely in their alpaca uniforms. Throughout it never comes to light why they are there, or who needs them. There is only one person concerned with the meeting, with managing Grandpa’s inability to speak: a repellent, obsequious, greasy-haired young man who sits half on, half off, an uncomfortable chair. The meeting has been instigated by Grandpa, he has contacted the firm (though by what channel is not revealed). The lesser of two problems faced is the fact, as I have indicated, that Grandpa is unable, or does not wish, to speak. Or perhaps his customary...